Day 20: Easter

I know we’re deep in the heart of the Christmas season, but today I’m going to talk about Easter instead. It is, after all, the most important Christian holiday—although I have to admit that, even as a child, I didn’t care for it much.

I know it’s my own fault—and my own selfishness, probably—but to me, Christmas is a lot more fun than Easter. But we’ll talk about that a little later. For now, let’s just stick to the facts.

Easter is pretty much the center point of Christianity. It’s the celebration of Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead after being crucified—which is, of course, the whole driving force behind Christian faith.

Like Christmas, Easter has its own “lead-up” season—Lent. Like Advent before Christmas, Lent is a period of fasting and repentance and a time to prepare for the joyous celebration of Easter.

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday (right after everybody gets all the sin out of their systems at Mardi Gras). On Ash Wednesday—the seventh Wednesday before Easter Sunday—Catholics and the members of some other Christian denominations go to church and get a dab of ashes on their foreheads. When the priest or minister rubs the ashes on your forehead, he says something along the lines of “Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.” (The exact words vary a bit, depending on where you go to church.)

I always hated Ash Wednesday. As if it isn’t depressing enough to have the priest remind you of your mortality, you’re forced to spend the whole day with people telling you, “Hey, you’ve got some dirt on your face.” Yeah, I know they’re just trying to help, but seriously. How stupid and/or filthy do people think I am that I wouldn’t notice a big smudge of ash on my head? Plus, Ash Wednesday sucks because you know the real suffering—Lent—is coming.

As a Catholic child, I always had to give something up for Lent. Although I tried unsuccessfully to give up things I hated to begin with—like lima beans—that never really flew with my dad. The whole point is that it’s supposed to be a sacrifice, so you have to give up something you really love.

Usually, during my childhood, I picked things like candy or ice cream. That was a good way to get past the Dad barrier, since most kids love candy and ice cream. What Dad never realized was that I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth, so giving up candy isn’t much harder for me than giving up lima beans. Or Brussels sprouts. Blech!

Many Christians also give up eating meat, especially on Fridays, during Lent. It’s just more of the same thing—sacrifice, fasting, and repentance—but it’s another reason I’ve always been annoyed during Lent. I mean, have you ever tried to get a pizza on a Friday during Lent? It takes forever, because most Christians (particularly here in America) see pizza as an easy alternative to a meat-based meal.

Anyway, the last Sunday before Easter is Palm Sunday. It’s the beginning of Holy Week, leading up to Easter Sunday. It celebrates Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem, when the local people hailed him as the Savior, throwing palm leaves in his path—that is, before they turned on him and told the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, to crucify him. (Incidentally, the ashes you get on your head on Ash Wednesday come from burning the palms used on the previous year’s Palm Sunday.)

On the Friday before Easter, Good Friday, Christians recall the day Jesus suffered and died on the cross. It’s a day of mourning. Many Christians—especially Catholics—mark Good Friday by meditating on the Stations of the Cross, a set of 14 pictures that detail the suffering Jesus went through before and during the crucifixion.

Finally, on Easter Sunday, the fasting ends and Christians celebrate how Jesus rose form the dead. It’s supposed to be the most joyful of the Christian holidays, because it’s a reminder of how God’s grace can renew life—both the life of the crucified Christ and the lives of all Christian believers.

I don’t know. Easter just seems kind of dull to me. Like I said, I’ve never liked it much. Maybe it’s because it takes place in the spring, when it’s still a little bit chilly but not cold enough to get all cozy in front of a roaring fire like people often do at Christmas. In my mind, Easter is an unpleasant day, when you have to sit around eating a boring meal with your family while wearing a flowery dress and an ugly hat, and shivering a little because it’s that awful in-between weather where it’s not cold enough to justify putting on the heat but too cold to actually be comfortable. Yuck.

Plus, there’s the “stuff” factor, always an issue for me. Easter is more or less about ideas—resurrection, renewal, rebirth—and not enough about stuff, like Christmas, with the presents and stockings and trees and wreaths.

Sure, there’s some stuff on Easter—like Easter baskets and eggs—but (at least in my humble opinion) it's pretty crappy stuff. Unless you’re a big fan of slightly stale jelly beans, plastic grass, and hard-boiled eggs that have their whites stained with dye, Easter doesn’t have much in the stuff department for you.

And that’s why I chose to be a Christian at Christmas instead. Even though just about everybody I know is too poor this year to afford lots of gifts and fancy decorations, Christmas still just seems like a lot more fun.

Day 18: Advent, Part 2

This is going to be a short and largely uninformative entry, but that’s because, after complaining so much about the lack of visible Christmas spirit here in Texas, I decided to go for one of my infamous makeshift decoration attempts (if you’ll recall my really pathetic Diwali celebration last month). Putting together even the sad display you’ll see below took so long that I didn’t have the time or energy to do any real research for today’s post.

So, below you’ll see my fabulous Nativity scene (also known as a crèche, if you want to get fancy). Yes, folks—that’s Play-Doh (and that is a registered trademark spelling). And it still smells exactly like it did when I was a kid and my sister would try to eat it while we were playing (not that I can talk—I used to try to eat the paper crayon wrappers).

So, okay, I know it’s not very artistic. The figures don’t have faces. Nothing is on the same size scale. And the members of the Holy Family don’t even have arms. But I’ve told you before—I am not an artist. And frankly, the few things that look even reasonably realistic in my Nativity scene—including the manger where my creepy lump of a Jesus is sleeping—were made by my friend Jen, who is apparently much better at working with Play-Doh than I am (thanks, Jen!).

Just to make sure you get the full, dramatic effect, I’m giving you some additional close-up views. Here’s the Holy Family (so what if the Virgin Mary is way too small to ever pick up her child out of the giant manger?).

And below are the three Wise Men. Okay, I know the one on the right came out looking a little too much like Santa Claus, but that still fits in with the Christmas theme, so who cares? My boyfriend actually suggested that I just give him a white beard and make it look intentional, but I figured I would just ruin the already poorly made figure, so I decided to let it go. You also have to appreciate my yellow Play-Doh camel behind them. (I couldn’t get the Play-Doh to hold its shape, so you can’t see his humps very well, but I tried. That’s the saddest part—I really, really tried.)

And last but not least is my personal favorite part—my little drummer boy and the miscellaneous animals. Yes, the little drummer boy couldn’t possibly reach high enough to play his drum, and the green duck is slightly larger than the black pig, but hey, I think it’s fun.

I may be pathetic, but having this Nativity set (which reeks of Play-Doh in a pleasant, nostalgic way) is actually making me feel a little better. Now I just have to get to work on a Christmas tree . . .

Day 17: Advent

Being away from home for the holiday season sucks—not that my current home, the too-expensive house in Pennsylvania that’s been up for sale for close to a year now, is all that inviting anymore.

But still—it’s hard to get into the Christmas spirit when you’re a girl from the Northeast who’s used to cold weather and you suddenly find yourself in balmy Texas, with no real hope for snow and not even any Christmas decorations to make it seem like home.

So, to try to ward off the holiday blues, I thought I would talk today about Advent.

For Christians, Advent is the period that leads up to Christmas, the birth of Jesus, which Catholics and Protestants celebrate on December 25. (Eastern Orthodox Christians usually celebrate the birth of Jesus when they celebrate the Epiphany—the time when the Wise Men visited the infant Jesus—on January 6.)

Advent begins on November 30 (although most department stores seem to think it should begin before Halloween), and it lasts until Christmas Day—the Feast of the Nativity. Although most modern Christians, especially in the United States, seem to “celebrate” Advent by shopping frantically for gifts and getting plastered at holiday parties, Advent is actually supposed to be a period of fasting and repenting for any sins committed throughout the year.

Orthodox Christians take the vague idea of “fasting” to a higher level: They’re supposed to refrain from eating either meat or dairy products for the entire 40-day period from the start of Advent until the Epiphany. Oops. I guess I’m not being Orthodox this month, since I already had a hot dog for lunch.

I have to say that I never heard about the fasting portion of Advent, even throughout all my years in CCD. Of course, one of my CCD teachers was a crusty, cantankerous old nun who told our third-grade class (and this is a direct quote): “Fuck and shit like that ain’t cursing. Only taking the name of the Lord in vain counts.” So maybe my religious education wasn’t quite as thorough as one might have hoped.

Anyway, Advent isn’t just about regretting sins and fasting. It’s also a period of joyful anticipation—getting excited and happy about the arrival of Jesus, whose miraculous birth to the Virgin Mary represents the fulfillment of prophecies and the promise of salvation for believers. Advent is also, at least since medieval times, a period to prepare for Jesus’s Second Coming, as well as a time to take notice of Jesus’s presence in our everyday lives.

That’s all well and good, but like I’ve said before, I’m a visual person and I like stuff. To me, Advent is a time for putting up Christmas decorations and “decking the halls” and getting ready for the magic of Christmas—which I still find myself anticipating every year, just as much as I did when I was a child.

Not having a wreath on my door or a Nativity set or even a Christmas tree is making this year’s Advent a bit of a downer. I should probably be focusing on fasting and repentance, rather than whining about how “un-Christmas-y” it is down here in Texas. But what can you do? I may be able to try out a new religion every month, but I guess changing my old habits will be a little harder.

Day 16: Heaven and Hell

I don’t know about you, but the picture I have in my mind of heaven—the place Christians hope to go after they die—comes from watching too much bad TV and a lot of lousy movies.

To me, heaven is a vast expanse of puffy white clouds that you can walk on without sinking, guarded by a set of “pearly gates.” Somewhere among the clouds, the old man (God the Father) sits on a throne and strokes his long beard, peering down through the clouds to see what’s going on among the living people on Earth.

Despite the fact that billions of people have died over the years, there are only a handful of people wandering around heaven. And the ones I picture there look a little too happy to be doing nothing all the time—kind of like they’re stoned.

Jesus is there, too—but he spends most of his time loitering around the pearly gates, gossiping with his buddy St. Peter, like they’re a couple of teenage boys with skateboards hanging around outside the 7-Eleven.

Because this is my mental image of heaven, I find it kind of shocking that anybody actually wants to go there. It seems really boring. But hey, I’m not judging. If wandering around in clouds with a goofy grin on your face sounds like fun to you, go for it.

Of course, heaven probably means something different to everyone. Heaven is really just a reward in the afterlife for those who lived good lives on Earth and accepted redemption through Jesus Christ. Believing in Jesus as the Savior is pretty much a prerequisite for making it to heaven, according to Christian thought. However, the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church did say that it’s possible for some non-Christians to get to heaven, writing: “Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart . . . those too may achieve eternal salvation.” So, basically, you can get in if nobody ever told you about Jesus, but if you know about him and don’t believe he’s the Savior, you’re kind of screwed.

Christians don’t all agree on what or where heaven is. Some, like many Fundamentalists, believe it’s a physical location (maybe something like my cloud-heaven image) where good people go after they die. Others say it’s an abstract concept—an indescribable repository for souls where good people finally get close to God. Pope John Paul II said that heaven is “neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship” with God.

Someone once suggested to me that heaven is whatever your last thought is before you die. That sounds great if you tend to think about vacations on white sandy beaches in tropical paradises. With my luck, though, I’d probably think about shoveling snow or balancing my checkbook. And that wouldn’t be heaven at all. It would be hell.

I’ve got a picture of hell in my mind, too—once again, gleaned from cartoons and movies and maybe a little bit of Dante’s Inferno. To me, hell is a cave with lots of fire and twisty pillars and crags of rock, and there are people chained to the stone walls, moaning. I hate to say it, but as unpleasant as that image is, it’s at least a bit more interesting than my notion of “cloud-heaven.”

But Christianity doesn’t necessarily view hell as a physical place any more than heaven—it’s just an abstract form of terrible and eternal punishment for people who, as Pope John Paul II put it, “freely and definitively separate themselves from God.” I don’t know—I think it’s all a little vague, and I prefer crisp, clear images (as evidenced by my own pathetic notions of heaven and hell).

I think my biggest issue with heaven and hell in general is the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any “stuff” there—either in my own personal version or in anything I’ve read about the Christian afterlife.

The Bible talks about heaven, saying, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.” (Matthew 6:19­–20)

Somehow, I don’t think the “treasures in heaven” the Bible is talking about are the same kind of “treasures” I like best—things like books and clothes and funny knickknacks. I know I’m an awful materialist, but I like my stuff. I like having things around me—especially books. They make me feel secure. They keep me from getting bored. They let me be alone when other people start to get irritating, but they provide conversation starters when I want some companionship.

To me, stuff is heaven. I just hope, if I ever get there, that “cloud-heaven” has a well-stocked library.

Day 15: Christianity—An Overview

Okay, so I probably should have given you this basic intro to Christianity about two weeks ago, but between the trip to Texas and the “plague,” things just didn’t work out like I planned. This won’t be exciting—dry recountings of general religious history rarely are—but let’s suck it up, okay? A little knowledge won’t kill us.

Christianity started off as nothing more than a tiny sect of believers in Palestine during the first century A.D. (I would go with the more politically correct “C.E.”, but hey, we’re talking about Jesus here, so I think it’s appropriate to do this old school, don’t you?).

In the beginning, Christianity was a type of Judaism. After all, Jesus himself was a devout Jew. Over time, though, the notion that Jesus was the Messiah promised to the Jews in the Old Testament led the early Christians to split from other Jews and begin their own, unique faith.

The Romans—who were pretty much in charge of a big chunk of the world at the time—weren’t thrilled with the Christians, whom they viewed as disloyal to the Roman Empire and possibly immoral. So the Romans did what any reasonable person would do when confronted by somebody they don’t like: They started killing them.

That didn’t stop the Christians, though. They just hid out and kept up with their new religion.

It was pretty easy for a lot of them to stay below the radar anyway, since most early Christians weren’t exactly part of high society. Most of them were members of the poor, lower classes, the kind of people who didn’t get a whole lot of respect or attention to begin with—which is probably why Christianity, with its emphasis on love and kindness to everyone and inner spirituality, was so appealing to them.

It was only when the Roman emperor Constantine lifted the decrees that allowed Christians to be persecuted that upper-class people started taking a serious look at the new religion. And apparently, they liked what they saw, because Christianity went on to become one of the world’s biggest religions—with perhaps more adherents throughout history than any other faith.

As Rome grew weaker politically, the Christian Church—and the popes who ran it—were right there to step in and fill the power vacuum. By the time Christianity was a thousand years old, it had become the foremost social and political force in the Western world. Not bad for a fringe movement started by a wandering Jewish carpenter.

The Church wasn’t as cohesive as it was powerful, however, and in 1054, it split in two. In a great schism, the Western (Latin-speaking) church, based in Rome, broke off ties with the Eastern (Greek-speaking) church of the East, where the Byzantine Empire was in charge. From that division, Christianity got its first two branches: the Western, or Roman Catholic, Church and the Eastern, or Orthodox, Church.

But that wasn’t the end of Christianity’s development or its problems—not by a long shot. By the early 16^th century, a lot of people were getting fed up with the way the Catholic Church was handling things. The leaders of the Church seemed to be less concerned with bringing people closer to God and more concerned with making money, putting their friends and family members in cushy church jobs, and having not-so-secret love affairs, despite the fact that they were supposed to have taken vows of celibacy.

So a few scholars—notably Martin Luther and later John Calvin—demanded reform, launching what became known as (surprise, surprise!) the Reformation. Although most of the early reformers, including Luther, didn’t originally intend to break away from the Catholic Church and start a new faith, resistance from the Church and (perhaps) their own stubbornness eventually led to a formal split.

And so, the Protestant branch of Christianity was born—and it became by far the most diverse of the three forms of Christianity. From what started as a push for fewer abuses and less corruption among church officials grew a whole slew of new churches, all with their own take on the basic beliefs of Christianity.

Protestants, in general, are different from Catholics and Orthodox Christians in a few key ways: They believe that all people—not just priests—can communicate directly with God. They believe that the Bible is a book of “received truth,” given to us by God, and as a result, it is infallible. They also believe that Christians obtain salvation simply by having faith in Jesus, not necessarily by doing good deeds or by getting forgiveness for their sins from a priest. In addition, most Protestants think it’s fine for a priest (or minister or whatever they call their clergy members) to get married—celibacy is not a prerequisite.

There are so many different Protestant traditions that I won’t attempt to cover them all here—at least not today (go ahead and thank me now if you want). From Anglicans to Methodists to Baptists, Protestantism has something for just about every taste.

At the heart of things, though, all Protestants—and Catholics and members of the Orthodox Church—believe the same basic thing: that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, that he came to Earth to preach a better way for people to live, and that he died and rose from the dead to redeem human beings from their sins and to make it possible for people to join him in heaven. That’s simple enough, right?

So I’ll stop torturing you with today’s miniature history lesson and tomorrow we can find something a little more entertaining to talk about—I hope.

Day 14: The Holy Trinity—Christianity’s “Big Three”

Last month, when I was still feeling healthy and motivated—before “the plague”—we talked about the Big Three of the Hindu pantheon: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. The Hindu triad represents three forms of the divine that are all part of one absolute God.

Christianity has its own “Big Three,” the Holy Trinity. Although Christians are always careful to emphasize that there is only one God, Catholics and most other Christians still recognize three different aspects of that one God—the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit.

God the Father is kind of like Brahma—he’s the Creator, the one who made the universe and everything in it out of some formless void. Despite the fact that popular depictions often show God the Father as a wise old man seated on some shiny throne in a heaven full of puffy clouds, there’s really no way of telling exactly what he looks like, or even if he’s male. The Book of Genesis says that God created man in his own image, but that’s pretty vague, if you ask me. Compared to, say, a duck-billed platypus, a female human is pretty damn close to the popular image of God as an old man. (In fact, most Christian denominations say that God has no gender—he/she is just God, and that’s all there is to it.) So, for the sake of simplicity, let’s just say he’s kind of an angry old guy who watches over things—that’s God the Father.

God the Son—i.e., Jesus Christ—is, in a way, a bit like Hinduism’s Vishnu, the Preserver. According to Christianity, things had gotten so bad on Earth that God the Father decided to send his son—who was simultaneously a real human being and also completely divine, one of the great inexplicable mysteries of Christian belief—to save us all from sin and eternal damnation.

In other words, Jesus came in order to "preserve" humanity and bring us salvation. Jesus Christ is (obviously) the focal point for Christians and the aspect of God that makes Christianity unique among other religions. For that reason, we'll move on for today and talk more about Jesus another time. Trust me, he'll get plenty of attention now that I'm starting to feel better.

The third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is probably the most difficult to comprehend—and in a group that includes a Father who is formed like humans but also formless and a Son who’s both all God and all human, that’s saying a lot.

I went to CCD for 9 years and I couldn’t really tell you exactly what the Holy Spirit is. (Of course, I went to CCD for 9 years and even taught it for one year, and up until a few minutes ago, when I Googled it, I couldn’t have told you that CCD stands for “Confraternity of Christian Doctrine,” so I may not be the greatest source.)

The Holy Spirit is often depicted as a dove—for example, the dove that came down to Jesus when he was baptized. But essentially, the Holy Spirit has no permanent form. It’s . . . well . . . spirit.

Unlike the third part of the Hindu triad, Shiva, however, the Holy Spirit doesn’t serve the role of “Destroyer.” In fact, the Holy Spirit is viewed as the Giver of Live, and is frequently considered an eternal divine force that existed before the universe was created.

The Holy Spirit is, sort of, the one who gets things done. It goes around giving power to those who need it and putting necessary steps in motion. For instance, the Holy Spirit was the one who made it possible for Jesus’s mother, the Virgin Mary, to conceive him without a human man. The Holy Spirit is, in my mind, kind of like the puppet master—working behind the scenes, but ultimately responsible for putting on the show.

So, yeah. It’s a little confusing. There are three aspects of God, but they don’t necessarily have distinct roles. There’s overlap and enigma and things just aren’t crystal-clear like they are in Hinduism. But the mystery is part of Christianity. Most Christians believe we can’t ever fully understand the precise form or nature of God. And we shouldn’t understand. We have to accept God on faith—that’s the whole point.

Me? I like clarity. Maybe that’s why I’ve always had so much trouble being Christian, both in the past and over the past two weeks. But I’ll keep trying.

Day 13: Redemption?

I’m kind of afraid to jinx it, but I think the “plague” I’ve been suffering may be starting to pass. I’m still sick, still weak, but I’m slowly beginning to feel like there might be life after this illness.

I’d like to be able to tell you that it was a miracle—that I prayed like a good Christian and my prayers were answered. But that’s not what happened.

When I first got sick, my prayers for relief were sincere. I asked God to help me feel better, and I think I even believed there would be a divine intervention—that God would reach down from heaven, lift the illness, and reward me for my good behavior.

Not so much. After several days of getting sicker and sicker, despite my pleas for divine help, I started to lose whatever trace of faith I might have had left. I kept praying, but I felt myself going through the motions. The prayers were no longer backed by any feeling or even hope. They were just words.

I kept reading the Bible, but instead of seeing it as a holy book, I found myself resenting God’s cruelty and seemingly unjustified anger over what appear to me to be minor infractions. I hate to say it, but I started to dislike God—at least the God of Christianity, who was letting me down.

I started to think I should abandon this project entirely. I was too sick to do research, too sick to write, too sick to care about religion or truth or anything other than the dim possibility that I might start feeling better someday.

But even at the worst moments, when I couldn’t stop coughing long enough to take a breath and thought that I might actually not survive this sickness (okay, I may be a bit overdramatic), I still had faith—in myself. Even when I don’t trust God, or even fully believe that God exists, I have faith in myself. I do what I say I’ll do. In a world where you can’t rely on anyone, I’ve always prided myself on the fact that you can rely on me.

So I have to finish this project for myself, even if no one else cares. I have to pick up my aching body and my exhausted mind and go back to work—even if it kills me. I’ll make my own miracle if I have to.

Then again, there’s always the possibility that God did help me. Maybe God is just a little slow when it comes to answering my prayers. Maybe this painfully slow recovery really is divine intervention. And, since I have no way to be sure, I’ll do what every good Christian should do: accept it on faith and give thanks to God for his mercy and kindness.

So, in that spirit, I’ll leave you with a quote from Psalm 92:

“It is good to give thanks to the Lord

And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High;

To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning

And Your faithfulness by night,

With the ten-stringed lute and with the harp,

With resounding music upon the lyre,

For You, O Lord, have made me glad by what You have done,

I will sing for joy at the works of Your hands. . . .”

So, thanks, God. Now, I’ve got work to do.